WHAT: Leaning on a friend when the world sucks WHERE: Danvers-Vance-Khan Residence WHEN: January 16th, late night WARNINGS: More sads, talk of death STATUS: Complete
Carol perched on the roof of the home she shared with her protégé now, the home she had shared with her wife until this morning – when she’d woken up to the space beside her empty and an hour later, Emmeline’s name listed among so many others she loved on a disappearance notification.
Her world felt like it had crumbled into pieces right then and there. It wasn’t a feeling she was unfamiliar with, not entirely. Carol had lived a long life filled with ups and downs. She’d lost lovers before, and with her supposed lifespan, some part of her had always assumed she would again. But losing Emmeline – so unexpectedly, so against their will, for no reason, no disease, no world in need of saving – had torn her apart.
Her morning had been spent atop the mountain peak Tony had found her on once before, in a moment of weakness, fear, and emotions overtaking her. The urge to let every bad emotion out by causing destruction was there. She could have destroyed the entire mountain in one fell swoop if she chose, but she had white-knuckled through and just let the tears pour. It was better that way – for Vallo, for the creatures that made their home here. She didn’t have a right to wreak havoc just because she was hurting.
Instead, she’d cried. She’d cried until she felt sure she could never shed another tear only for them to start pouring again. She was exhausted in a way she rarely felt anymore. Part of her wanted to do nothing more than curl up in a bed with a gallon of Ben & Jerry’s and hide away for days. So much more of her couldn’t bear to enter the room she’d shared with her wife, knowing she wouldn’t find Emmeline waiting in bed for her, wouldn’t be able to pull her into her arms and kiss her and whisper I love you into her ear as they fell asleep together.
So, she stayed awake, sitting out in the cold and staring out into Vallo’s night sky. The constellations, still so starkly different from Earth’s, were familiar now – and infuriating, at the same time. She had never wanted more to be able to break through the atmosphere here. She should be able to – Vallo tempered her powers but hadn’t stripped them from her entirely – but whatever held them here worked well until it chose to dispose of them. She remembered pushing and pushing against it not long after she’d gotten here in an attempt to break through; there hadn’t been any give at all.
And what good would it do if she could? More likely than not, Emmeline was dead. Pepper, Tony, Natasha, they were dead. She took comfort in knowing some were alive. Kate, Emily, Ella, they were alive. Maybe even together if whatever powers dictated these things felt benevolent enough. Thor was alive.
Thor. She thought of Wanda, how hard she must have taken the news, and she found herself wanting desperately to see her friend – not for the first time today – and yet being unable to scrounge up the energy. But the moment Wanda appeared in her mind, her attention was pulled downward, and she stood, looking down from the roof to see a familiar figure coming up the front walk.
Disappearance notifications exhausted Wanda. She was tired of reading them, tired of knowing the names on them, tired of having people that were there one moment and gone the next – all at random, no rhyme or reason. All of it felt like a ticking time bomb, and soon there’d be another list with another set of names she knew. Another set of names she loved.
Would Billy and Tommy be on them, she wondered? That would crack her open, shatter her to pieces in a way losing Vision did not, but so far they were unscathed from Vallo’s roulette. She considered that a blessing.
Others were not so lucky today.
The hours passed. She kept herself busy, trying not to look towards the direction of Peter’s bedroom door. She’d scroll through her phone and avoid looking at the last messages Thor had sent her; how he’d requested mangos the last time they saw each other (she had a whole tote bag full), how Love was the only thing keeping him together.
At one point she stepped into her bathroom and saw an earring that didn’t belong to her. It was Bo’s, from the last time they got together and she stayed to warm her bed – she’d get it back the next time she came over, was the rationale behind it still being on her counter. Wanda plucked it from the counter and tucked it away in a jewelry box.
Texting Carol crossed her mind several times. It could have been one of those little emojis, it could have been a picture of Quackers – the Flerken that stayed with her loyally, fluttering in and out of her cottage like he had lived there all along – but she didn’t. She could have put feelers out, drinking in the maelstrom of emotions she knew her friend was feeling.
But she didn’t do that, either. Wanda knew that kind of grief. To have a relationship, a future, come to an abrupt stop — for it to be gone? They weren’t the first Outlanders it happened to. They would not be the last.
In the end, she came in person. The sun was absent, and the sky was darkness and stars. Wanda wore sweats and a thin cardigan despite the chill in the air, a tote bag of fruit hanging from her shoulder. At first, she didn’t see Carol.
She felt her instead.
“I take it you aren’t cold?” Wanda called out, standing in the middle of the lawn. She could see her breath as she spoke the words.
“I’m a literal space heater,” was Carol’s response. Her voice was raspy and tired; her throat felt raw even now. She’d held herself together for Kamala, but she’d spent hours before that sobbing on a goddamn mountain. Now it was the act of controlling herself, of holding back, that felt insurmountable. Her entire body felt tight from the effort.
She stepped off the rooftop casually – anyone watching who wasn’t in the know might think she was looking to break a few bones, but she floated easily down to the ground, landing neatly in front of Wanda on the lawn.
“Hi,” she greeted her, reaching out to link her arm through Wanda’s. “Come inside, I’ve got the heat going in there for Kamala.”
Space heater. There was a pun in there, somewhere; a shame she wasn’t witty enough to put it together and sound funny. Humor would be nice, but she wasn’t sure if they had the capacity for quips right this second. “I’d have you cuddle me on the roof otherwise,” Wanda chuckled, squeezing Carol’s arm with her own. “You sound awful, by the way.”
She meant that tenderly, lovingly – and with an aching heart for her friend.
“I feel awful,” Carol replied, opening the front door and waving Wanda inside first. She couldn’t quite muster up a smile, but she gazed at Wanda fondly, equally concerned for her. She knew how important Thor had been in Wanda’s life, and that wasn’t something insignificant, despite the breadth of her own losses today.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she murmured. “I should have reached out, but I…” She waved her free hand in a restless, helpless sort of manner. It was all just too much today – even answering Sam earlier, with Kamala curled up against her, had taken brain power she didn’t truly have. But she was damn good at pretending.
“I wanted to reach out to you earlier too,” Wanda admitted, happy to be immersed in the warmth of the house as bittersweet as it all was. It was missing someone, and there was a chance that someone might never come back. “I am not a stranger to losing friends. But you–”
You lost your future, she thought. She could have projected that into Carol’s mind, too. It was unnecessary. What she left unsaid was obvious, and when she dropped the bag of mangos on the coffee table, she took Carol into her arms.
And squeezed her tightly.
Carol didn’t resist for a second. For someone who had spent more than her fair share of her time alone, she was a junkie for affection, for touch. Kamala had practically flattened her when she’d come home earlier, and Carol had soaked in every bit of it; this was no different. She let herself sink into Wanda’s embrace, wrapping her arms around her back and dropping her face into her shoulder.
“I love you,” she sighed, squeezing Wanda right back. She was making a point of saying that right now. It was never something she’d been shy about saying or showing to the best of her abilities; she knew Emme had disappeared knowing how much she loved her. But losing her made Carol want to express it even more fervently to those who remained.
“I love you too,” came her reply, easy as breathing, knowing too well how important those words were and how important they were to say it while you still had people you loved. “And I hate how you’re feeling.”
Wanda knew it without the use of her powers. Carol lost her wife, and in losing her wife, she lost her daughter, and that kind of loss was — unique. She’d gone through it with Iryna. Tommy had experienced it too with Sil. And perhaps they continued to exist in the sea of timelines, because Stephen Strange always hammered in how there were millions of them.
It was just tragic that this may be a timeline without them.
Carol nodded, drawing away and ushering Wanda over to the couch to sit. She couldn’t argue that Wanda didn’t understand because she’d witnessed it. She’d witnessed Wanda go through this exact sort of loss over a year ago and grapple with it in the same way: without exploding, without lashing out, no matter how tempting it felt. Watching people disappear wasn’t a unique experience; most Outlanders who’d lost someone they’d dedicated their lives to here had been through it, too.
“You brought fruit?” she asked, leaning forward to pull the discarded bag off the coffee table. She reached in to pull out a mango and held it up to her friend. “Are you planning to pelt me with these, Maximoff? I’ll fight back.”
“I would have thrown them at you the moment I stepped onto your property,” Wanda softly snorted, taking a seat and conjuring the knife in the bag to appear in her hands. She took the mango back. “These were for—Thor, at first. When he lost Jacob, I would sit with him and peel oranges. And I would feed him some. We would sit silently.”
Because what else was there to say? I’m sorry felt repetitive. The sentiment was nice on the surface, but that’s all it was. It was the only thing most people knew how to say. Sometimes, it was exhausting to hear.
“He asked for mangos last time. I bought too many,” she added, turning the fruit over in her hand. “I was not sure if you wanted to talk. And if you don’t, that’s okay. I would like to keep you company, though. If you let me.”
“Yeah, I want you to stay with me,” Carol told her. She smiled, but it was small and subdued, nothing like the usual grin she wore around the people she loved. She couldn’t summon it right now if she tried. “That you and me, partners-in-crime thing is about all I’ve got left now.”
That wasn’t entirely true. Along with Wanda, she still had Kamala, Sam, Yelena (and God, she had to be crippled in pain, too), and that was good. It helped. But the losses were so much greater. Tony, Pepper, Ella, James, Emily, Kate, Thor – so many of her circle, people she loved, were gone in the blink of an eye.
“You think they’re dead now?” That question applied to half of that list of disappearances. She didn’t want to think about it, but the thought was an invasive one. Better to just confront it outright.
Lucky for Carol, Wanda excelled at crime. She had worked for a terrorist organization, ran from the government for a few years, held a whole town hostage because her coping skills were non-existent. Steve and Clint had tried to fill her with hopes that she could be better, do better - the superhero propaganda and all.
That was not for her. She had come to accept it.
“It’s possible,” she answered, not bothering to sugarcoat it. Wanda leaned back into the couch and began to slice the knife under the fruit’s skin, and dragged it along for an even peel. “It is also entirely possible they were taken to a different world. The unknown aspect of it is… upsetting.”
“Yeah,” Carol agreed, eyes falling to Wanda’s hand and watching how smoothly the movement flowed as she peeled the fruit. There was, oddly enough, something soothing about witnessing it. “Thor’s okay, we know that. Ella, Emily, Kate, they’re all alive. The rest–”
They’re dead.
She shook her head. Those were more thoughts she didn’t want in her head. They’d pummeled her this morning, but coming home to Kamala had helped her force them aside. She was hurting, too, and Carol was the adult in the situation, and she wanted Kamala to lean on her, not the other way around. The teenager in the house didn’t need to take on the weight of Carol’s grief or the darkness of her thoughts and fears.
The possibility Wanda pointed out existed. They all could have gone to another world. She’d heard of all kinds of weird interludes from Vallo returnees, Barbieland and Bikini Bottom of SpongeBob fame most recently among them. And there was no saying they hadn’t gone to another world like Vallo or, hell, an alternate Vallo itself.
The problem was that there was no saying for sure. And if they’d gone home, they were dead. Emmeline, Natasha, Pepper, Tony – all dead at the hands of different but comparable genocidal maniacs.
“Emmeline deserved more than me, anyway. I hope if she’s in some other world, she finds someone better for her.”
“And yet,” Wanda began, letting the first stripe of peel fall into her lap before working on the rest. Mangos were a bit messy to the hands; its juices clung to her more than an orange would, but she had plenty to get through and they would not go to waste. They were delicious anyway. “No matter how you felt about yourself, she chose you anyway.”
She didn’t agree with Carol. Agreeing with Carol would imply she wasn’t someone worth taking a chance on or being with, and that wasn’t something she believed. “Every bump you two hit, you overcame. You were who she wanted.”
Carol knew that. They’d been drawn to each other in this inexplicable way that neither of them could wrap their heads around at first. She had just been the one to give into it first, to admit that she loved this woman and hold on to the hope that Emme loved her, too. Through all of the ups and downs, through every bump they’d hit, as Wanda put it – they’d come through it. No matter what happened, they’d stuck it out and wanted to make their relationship stronger.
But right now, she couldn’t help feeling like she had brought this on herself. She hadn’t really treated Emmeline right, had she? Not the way she deserved, not always. Maybe losing her was Vallo’s way of showing her she was too fucked up. Emme deserved better, someone to find complete peace with, and maybe that person wasn’t Carol, even if she hated the thought of it being anyone else.
“I know there’s a chance she’ll come back in a few months and everything will be okay,” she said quietly. Her throat started to feel tight; one fist closed around the edge of a couch pillow, nails embedding into the fabric. She’d thought the tears might finally be at an end for the day, but her eyes watered, maybe just to prove her wrong. “But that’s just not how my luck works. I can’t get my hopes up that high.”
Her voice was starting to shake. She hated it.
Wanda shared those hopes. She wanted things to work out for her friend. She wanted them to work out for everyone she loved. Kratos had returned to Freya, a silver-lining she was glad to see - but things rarely turned out that way for most. Hoping, in the end, was dangerous.
But it was something to hold onto when the days felt raw.
“It is okay to hope,” she sighed, slicing into the actual fruit itself to cut off a wedge. “It is also okay to accept the circumstances, though I find that to happen more realistically after you – grieve.”
Denial was the quickest phase, she thought. Anger was the next one. That one often lingered.
All Carol could manage was a nod. She wished there was a way to fast forward through the grieving process, but she’d gone through it enough to know there wasn’t. She’d always had a habit of jumping straight to anger and holding onto that until she burnt it out on some threat or another. She could never take it all in because she didn’t have time to waste. There were moments, stolen between encounters when she had peace, when she could sit in her ship and be quiet, but they were few and far between.
Now, she had nothing but time, and she wasn’t sure what to do with it. She didn’t have galaxies upon galaxies to distract her, but she didn’t have space to herself either. She had Kamala to think about; if she didn’t, she’d have fled this damn house without a second glance back.
She couldn’t be more thankful for Wanda right now. Despite the waves of emotion, her friend was a grounding force she needed.
“I’m sorry about Thor, too,” she offered, shifting a bit to drop her chin onto Wanda’s shoulder. “I know how much you’re gonna miss him.”
“Thor will be fine,” was Wanda’s answer to that, taking in another deep breath but not letting that turn into another sigh. Losing him stung, and in a way, Thor was someone she wished she could be. He had loved so much and lost so much – his family, Jane – but he had never lost himself. They were kindred spirits, and while they may never be close back in their world, she was happy to have the chance to get to know him here. “He is strong. He has Love.”
And if he was back home, then he wouldn’t remember losing Torunn or Jacob either.
“I’m worried about you,” she admitted softly, offering her the piece of fruit. “Vallo showed you a future. And then – it took it.”
Just like that, as if Vallo itself had its own fingers to snap to erase people in this world.
“I think it might be the cruelest thing it can do to us.”
Carol quietly accepted the fruit offering and popped it into her mouth. “I don’t think we can trust anything this place shows us,” she said at last. “It’s all just ‘what ifs’. Nothing stays the same here. Not for us.”
She could have said more. It was so easy to fall down the path of villainizing herself, making herself out to be the bad guy that didn’t deserve Emme, didn’t deserve their life, didn’t deserve the daughter they were promised. She knew Wanda could hear it all if she chose, and that was okay. But she was making the effort to give herself a little more credit.
Maybe Vallo was punishing her. It felt naive to ignore the possibility. But maybe this was just how things went here, and two-and-a-half years in, she needed to accept that.
Wanda saw that Vallo… worked in people’s favors. But she was also convinced that luck was temporary, and that in the next year or so, there would be more like them. More people who had gotten their hopes of a life and family here, all for it to be gone the next day for no other reason than simply because. She wanted to have Iryna. She wanted Tommy to have had Sil with Toph. She wanted Sebastian to be a future for Billy and Teddy, and not another tease at something they couldn’t have.
“If I were anyone else, I would try to convince you otherwise and perhaps attempt to say something uplifting. But I am not. I don’t like to sugarcoat, and I don’t think you would appreciate me sugar coating either.”
Carol would smell her bullshit anyway.
“The only thing I can try to say is - enjoy what is left while you can. That is what I’ve been doing. Time eventually soothes the sting. It’s never fully gone, though.”
“I know,” Carol agreed. And she did. She’d felt loss. Even with Emmeline, she’d expected to lose her someday. Ideally, that was a century out after having lived a full life together, but that wasn’t how it had worked out for them. She knew the pain would fade; she’d never, ever forget, but it wouldn’t be her focus forever.
Today it was too fresh, and it was taking every ounce of effort she possessed to keep herself together. Eventually, it wouldn’t be so hard.
“Let me get you a garbage bag,” she murmured, straightening to get off on the couch. She leaned in and kissed Wanda’s cheek softly. “Love you. Thanks for being here.”
“Get back here,” Wanda demanded softly, and those skin peelings vanished with a ripple of red magic - they were transposed into the trash, of course, not just lost into some void, but she didn’t want Carol to make any extra unnecessary effort. Her powers had convenient mundane use. “We can put something on and just—sit.”
They didn’t have to talk anymore if she didn’t want to. They could succumb to just being mind numb in each other’s company, knowing for now, they had one another.